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If I wasn’t so invested in my druid, I would switch my main to demon hunter ‘cuz this is the most fun I’ve had playing a melee character in a long time.

It has the crazy flashy blade thing I like, enough self healing that I don’t tend to die easily, and the movement is just something else. Double jump, dash forward, jump off ALL THE THINGS and glide safely down – it’s awesome. I tend to jump off any object event two inches off the ground and then glide unnecessarily six feet forward. It’s so. Much. Fun.

I ran every LFR wing yesterday on my demon hunter. My DPS was probably embarrassing but I uninstalled Recount a while ago and couldn’t care less.She’s now my second 110 character and geared enough to run Nighthold and I’m really enjoying the whole demon hunter thing.

Meanwhile, my druid has become a PvP fiend, healed his way through his first PUG’d Emerald Nightmare, and is close to getting 250 mounts. So it’s been a good run all around, I think. Hopefully after the reset on Tuesday I can get the last of my corrupted essences for the artifact appearance quest, finish getting the Lothien Prowler mount (which puts me at 249 mounts), purchase my 250th mount, and call it good.

I haven’t posted about it in a long time, but transmog is one of my very favorite things in the game and one of my largest time-sinks. If I’m not doing current content, I’m probably running old dungeons and raids to collect armor appearances, pets, and mounts. A few months ago after the appearance collection tab was introduced, my husband and I ran every single dungeon and raid in the game up through Warlords heroic dungeons, amassing as many armor and weapon appearances as we could.

I have an enormous amount of transmog material to play with, especially under the leather armor category. So today I’m going to showcase a simple set I threw together for my druid, Sylvestris. It’s Nightmare themed and easy enough to collect for druids at level 110 who want something non-leafy, non-green to run around in. Especially if you want to roleplay as a Nightmare-infested druid!

This is the Haunted Forest set from normal mode 10 and 25-man Throne of Thunder. The set drops as tier tokens for druids, but look-alike pieces also drop for other classes. The staff is a PvP staff from the Warlords expansion, and was the closest thing I could find to compliment the set.

Overall, the set is not difficult to collect. It is gated behind weekly raid lockouts and your own ability to solo a raid from two expansions ago. The staff, if you didn’t collect it during Warlords, might take a little bit of effort to earn now that PvP currency isn’t straight honor/conquest points, but there are other staves to substitute that fit the black and red theme. Staff of Natural Fury comes to mind as a good alternative, as it is simple, druidy, and black. I added a cosmetic weapon enchant to the staff to make it glow extra red and drippy, to give the effect of the evil, Nightmare corrupted trees.

Get The Look:

For Druids:
Tier tokens for the set drop in 10 man normal and 25 man normal Throne of Thunder.
Chest – Dark Animus
Gauntlets – Council of Elders
Helm – Twin Consorts
Legs – Ji-Kun (you do not technically need to collect the legs if you are going to wear the chest piece, as it covers them entirely.)
Shoulders – Iron Qon

Apart from the tier tokens, several additional pieces drop in the raid that will complete your look:
Girdle of Night and Day (belt) – Twin Consorts (Sylv is not wearing this as part of his set, as I have not yet seen it drop. I chose to hide the belt instead.)Deeproot Treads (feet) – These are a zone drop from the raid. Good luck. If you don’t have them or don’t want to farm them, there are many alternatives, as only the bottom portion of the boot will show under the robes. Sylv’s boots are transmogged to Black Featherlight Boots, which are appropriately red and black.

These pieces are not druid-specific and can be used to create the transmog look for any other leather wearing class. They can also be used to fill in the gaps for any druid who is having difficulty collecting the tier tokens.

Overall, I went for a Nightmare druid theme with lots of red, black, and purple natural elements to it to create a look that screamed corrupted nature.

Soloing Throne of Thunder:

By and large, 10 man normal Throne of Thunder is an easy endeavor. As a level 110 Feral druid, I ripped it apart in half an hour. For the more experienced soloist, raising the difficulty to 25 man normal will yield more loot, and therefore higher probability of the drops you want. Otherwise you might want to take a trusted friend, however, because it can get dicey, especially if you aren’t well geared or well-versed on the boss fights.

Dark Animus
On 10 man, Dark Animus posed no threat at all to my druid. He was dead in about 10 seconds, and my health was at 100%. On 25, it’s a different story, and I recommend bringing a friend to make it much easier. The issue is in the adds that activate at the beginning of the fight: they do massive amounts of damage, and my druid died in seconds. When I brought my husband along on his monk, it took us several tries to figure it out. Our winning strategy was Sylv in Guardian spec and his monk in Windwalker spec. Start the fight, stack on the boss before he activates, blow all your cooldowns, and DPS the shit out of the adds until the boss wakes up, then burn him down. As a druid in bear form, I was able to survive the damage, and my husband could kill the boss. If you’re going solo on 25 man, try it as a bear.

Iron Qon:
Do not kill him until he mounts all three of his quilen. My husband and I learned this the hard way. If you kill him before you kill all three quilen, he bugs out, and you cannot loot him.

Lei-Shen
This fight is not hard to solo, but it can be hectic. Stay close to the center of the platform so you don’t get knocked off the edge. When he summons his adds, spam AoE and wait for him to rejoin the fight. Instant heals, potions, knockbacks and damage reducing cooldowns will get you through the metric fuckton of adds he summons if you’re having trouble.

So I haven’t PvPed in a very long time and recently got back into it, as I am wont to do towards the end of an expansion. I’ve been loving me some Ashran and have been working hard to earn the PvP titles from the garrison building. Sylvestris, Slayer of Sin’dorei just sounds so damn good.

But I totally forgot that at the start of a new season all conquest points are lost…and I didn’t know to spend them before they reset…and I just logged in to find a couple thousand gold in my mail and several thousand conquest points gone from my currency tab. Ouch.